College Rankings (Part I): Rank, Indeed

10 million hits in one day.  No, I'm not talking about my blog (yet).  That's how many hits the U.S. News and World Report website received on the day their annual Best Colleges guide dropped last year.  The number is likely to be matched, if not roundly thrashed, next Tuesday, when the 2012 edition makes its debut.  Over the weekend the Washington Post ran an enlightening article on the mild-mannered man who determines the algorithm for ranking colleges.  The author aptly concluded that Bob Morse "is to colleges what Robert Parker is to wine": a man who compelled an entire industry to bow down before the altar of statistics.

In some ways that's a good thing.  Before rankings came along, colleges could handle their business just as they pleased, and no one was the wiser.  They were under no obligation to let prospective students know about student/faculty ratios, graduation rates, or average SAT scores.  The information that did trickle out was fitfully reported and not standardized, so that it was almost impossible to compare across institutions.  Then the rankings came along.  They were a hit, and they put the fear of God (or rather, Bob) into deans everywhere.  A college that failed to supply the requested information could see its ranking drop or get left out of the rankings altogether.  As a result, there is now more information about the internal workings of colleges available to students and parents than ever before.

And that's where my praise for the Best Colleges guide stops.  The rankings, despite the good intentions of Mr. Morse, have contributed substantially to the present overheated climate in college admissions.  Not only do colleges waste time and money each year in jockeying for position -- why wouldn't they, if a modest bump in the rankings can mean a substantial pay raise for the Dean? -- but students suffer as well.  In my next post, I'll outline my principal objections to the rankings.  In a third post, I will then offer my own suggestions for alternatives.

P.S.  Why am I writing about the U.S. News college rankings in a blog that's ostensibly about the SAT and the ACT?  Well, SAT/ACT scores count for 7.5% of a college's rank in the U.S. News methodology.  That's about 7.5% too much, in my opinion.  The use of the SAT and the ACT to rank colleges is just one of a panoply of misuses of those tests that I aim to examine in the coming months.